Building a research university: IT – I&T process

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Huu Duc (Vice President of Vietnam National University, Hanoi)

- Professor, on what basis did VNU build the 1206 criteria for research universities?

First of all, it must be said that according to the advanced university management approach, VNU pays great attention to internal analysis, target management and system management through its indicators. Targets are the direction, and indicators are the positioning. The set of criteria for research universities that VNU has just issued is the basis for VNU, its member and affiliated training and research units to analyze, evaluate, position the current situation, determine the right development plan to prioritize investment; promote units to gradually develop to meet regional and international research university standards. The set of criteria includes many quantified groups of criteria such as the group of criteria on scientific research achievements and knowledge transfer; the group of criteria on training quality; the group of criteria on the level of internationalization, the group of criteria on infrastructure serving training and research.

This set of criteria is synthesized and specified based on the reference criteria of Carnegie Classification (USA), Amano Research University classification criteria (Japan), QS University star criteria with a rating of 4 stars or higher (or/and the world 500 group), criteria for determining research universities of the Association of American Universities, and at the same time considering specific factors in the context of Vietnam. These groups of criteria are built with the goal of ensuring both standardization and international integration, while not being too far from the development practice of Vietnamese science and education, in line with the current capacity of VNU.

- How are the criteria set issued, along with the implementation roadmap and goals for each stage, Professor?

VNU has set itself the goal of becoming a multidisciplinary, multi-field research university center that meets international standards, ranked among the top 200 universities in Asia by 2015, and reaching the top 100 advanced universities in the world by 2020. Corresponding to that roadmap, this set of criteria has very specific targets for a university in the top 200 in Asia.

To ensure the serious and effective implementation of this roadmap, VNU requires that every year, the heads of member and affiliated training and research units, based on the guidelines, summarize the implementation of the tasks of the school year, analyze the current situation and self-assess the level of meeting the standards of a research university of the unit. This is also an important basis for determining the planning targets and solutions to implement the tasks of the next school year. The results of the assessment of the level of meeting the standards of a research university according to these guidelines are a mandatory Appendix attached to the school year summary report and the annual budget plan of the unit.

Compared to this set of criteria, the University of Natural Sciences has now had very positive approaches. The University of Social Sciences and Humanities and the University of Economics have proactively positioned the annual increase in the results of the indicators.

- That is the implementation situation of the units, but what is the result for the whole VNU, Professor?

In 2014, VNU continued to achieve encouraging results in university rankings. According to the QS ranking, VNU was ranked in the group of 161-170 leading universities in Asia; ranked 1st in Vietnam. In the SCImago Research Group's Scientific Research Unit Ranking (based on data up to 2012), VNU ranked 2327th in the world, ranked 2nd in Vietnam in terms of international publications; ranked 284th in the world in terms of innovation index, ranked 346th in the world and ranked 1st in Vietnam in terms of electronic information portal size. According to the Webometrics ranking of Cybemetrics Lab, VNU's international publications were ranked 1829th in the world, ranked 2nd among Vietnamese universities (based on data up to 2013); VNU's internal resources and international publications are ranked 899th in the world, 207th in Asia and 1st in Vietnam; VNU's digital library (internal resources) is ranked 794th in the world, 131st in Asia and 1st in Vietnam. These numbers can be considered worthy results for the steadfastness with target management that VNU has implemented.

- Could you please explain more specifically about the content of the above rankings?

QS Rankings (http://www.topuniversities.com/node/4084/ranking-details/asian-university-rankings/2014) has been close to VNU for many years. It is a fairly good mapping with the 1209 criteria set for research universities. SCImago Ranking (Spain) (http://www.scimagoir.com) only cares about research results and only ranks universities and research institutions that published more than 100 articles in the Scopus database in the previous year. Vietnam has 4 units included in this list, in order: Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, VNU-HCM, VNU-Hanoi and Hanoi University of Science and Technology.

In the above presentation, in addition to the ranking of the total number of articles, I intended to announce the results of the evaluation of the innovation index in research works. This index is measured by the number of times scientific articles are cited in patents. Some people think that VNU is still a basic research unit, but the world ranking of 284 shows to what extent our basic research has had a guiding effect on patents (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology and VNU-HCM both have an index of 282).

- One comment is that all the above rankings also have the same criteria of international publication and website size?

That is a correct comment and in line with the trend of the times. At the time of its inception (2004), the Webometrics ranking (http://www.webometrics.info) only cares about the scale and influence of university websites, including the scale of digital resources. Later (since 2012), this ranking added an index on the number of international publications of universities in the Scopus database. Therefore, the current Webometrics ranking results are an integration of two current university development trends: research (international publications) and digitalization (digital resources). Because of the integration of these two indicators, no Vietnamese universities, except VNU, are in the world's top 1000. For the Scimago ranking, in addition to the two factors of digitalization and research results, the level of influence and contribution of basic research to the birth of inventions and patents is also evaluated.

- What is the solution to continue developing VNU towards standardization and international integration, Professor?

In today's era, the requirements for rapid and sustainable development all have the following five characteristics: (i) openness, knowledge exchange, exploitation of global demand; (ii) stability and consensus; (iii) correct orientation towards the future, trends and laws; (iv) concentrated and effective investment; (v) allocation of resources according to market mechanisms, based on output products and (v) prestigious leadership and competent administrative apparatus. In the topic of this discussion, I will limit myself to three points (i, iii and iv). First, in recent years, we have actively opened up and deeply integrated, especially with universities in the ASEAN Network (AUN). During that process, quality management of training, scientific research and quality assurance conditions have been transferred in a specific and effective manner. We have integrated and implemented quality assurance activities according to international practices, standards and models. Through that, we have become familiar with and boldly implemented a number of sets of indicators for internal analysis and university governance. That integration process needs to be absorbed and promoted more comprehensively and drastically. Second, for future orientation, we have implemented good target management, built a reasonable set of indicators, which are essentially the criteria for research universities that we are pursuing. If we do not quantify activities, we will lose direction in investing to increase values. Scientific governance and the tendency to rely on data analysis and indicators are very attractive because they are measurable and can create rapid growth. There may be rigidity when relying too much on data, but it is still necessary at present when we are in the early stages of integration. Finally, the issue of resource allocation according to output products is a method, but in essence it is the driving force and the ultimate goal. According to this method, everyone strives so that our VNU has more training products and better science and technology, and has a more accurate measure of the quality of the staff.

- Coming up with a good plan is difficult, but successfully implementing it is even more difficult. What can you say before ending this interview, Professor?

I have just combined a few very meaningful English letters, IT - I&T. When talking about IT, everyone immediately understands that it is information technology (Imformation Technology), the letter I is also close to that meaning: information and knowledge (Information), and the letter T is time, moment (Time). I want to explain it further like this, in the age of information technology (IT), the world is flat, society is an information society, we have a lot of information and knowledge (I). Knowing a lot of I means knowing in advance what the world is doing and urging, giving advice to leaders to implement. But knowing is not enough, we need to choose the right time, time (T). That is effective perseverance. In the past time, we have been working and studying to have enough I, enough information about rankings, about international publication trends, but we cannot be willful and implement drastically. We have convinced each other, built the culture together and chosen the T time and resources to implement. Now is the right T time for us to synchronously implement in all member and affiliated units the information that we have learned and selected during the integration process; bring the goals and criteria we have built, widely and comprehensively apply through the environment and approach of information technology to implement. We have approached that process correctly, believe we will succeed.

Thank you, Professor.